Content-Length: 2444
Chickens across Asia: summary.
I had a number of replies to my query about chicken names in Central Asia,
some of which were especially productive (and some rather frivolous). Many
thanks to everyone and special thanks to Reinhard Hahn.=20
The paper that started us chasing this hare is;=20
West, B. and Zhou, B-X. 1988. =91Did chickens go north? New Evidence for
domestication. Journal of Archaeological Science, 15:515-533.=20
This points out that there are domestic chicken bones in S. China as early
as 6000 B.C. and that these must have come from the Burmese jungle fowl
which was thus domesticated a little earlier in what are now the Shan
states. The chicken would then have spread across central Asia somehow and
only looped back into India later. It actually hit early north Neolithic
Europe ca. 3000 B.C.=20
There are some very suggestive pieces of evidence, in particular a lexeme
that appears to spread all the way from Korea to Lake Chad. There is also
some cultural evidence, starting with chickens atop shamans=92 poles in
Mongolia and ending with the weathercock on the English country church.=20
Since then, by a remarkable coincidence, a paper has been published giving
DNA evidence for this hypothesis. This proposes the wild jungle-fowl of N.
Thailand as the ancestor of our domestic chicken.=20
So this looks like an excellent case for the archaeological/linguistic and
DNA evidence coming together.=20
I am still looking for help with chicken names, in case there are further
volunteers. In particular, there are deficits in the area of Indo-Iranian
(of the CIS) and Uralic languages. The words are;=20
chicken/hen cock/rooster chick Thanks again
Roger Blench